If "people vote their pocketbooks," as political folk wisdom holds, then George Bush should win the presidency in a cakewalk. By most conventional measures - plentiful jobs, steady growth, a low inflation rate - Bush's Republicans can claim to have delivered prosperity in the Reagan-Bush era. And claim it they do. "The focus of our campaign is, we've done a good job," said Mark Goodin, a Bush campaign spokesman. "We delivered on a record we can be proud of. " In 1988, the politics of prosperity are not that simple, of course.

Situated as we are, adjacent to a metropolitan area with two main highways, we have, literally, acres of diamonds. - Harry L. Cranmer, Delaware Township committeeman, April 1942. A few months after the United States entered World War II, leaders in this sleepy residential community were salivating over the future. Cranmer and his contemporaries forecast a great development wave heading straight toward them from Philadelphia and Camden. They envisioned the town's peach orchards, dairy farms and wheat fields giving rise to a velvety, tree- lined suburb and a thriving commercial district.

IN AMY POLLACK'S op-ed piece on family planning as a key to freedom for Afghan women (Nov. 28), she cites Bangladesh as a success story. With contraception, she argues, women have fewer children, incomes go up, and women have better lives. She has it exactly backward. Economic development comes first. More money means better health care, and infant mortality drops. Since more children survive, women have fewer of them. Voluntarily. This is what happened in the U.S. and Europe, and more recently, in Bangladesh.

Prosperity has come to the Preston Diner. The double-wide vintage 1966 dining car is bathed in a warm pink glow as patrons jam into red upholstered booths. They plop onto counter stools, slurp homemade soup and watch the truck traffic rumble by on Route 291 outside the homey diner's window. In the middle of it all sits Trina Canzanese, the owner. Well-dressed and bejeweled, Canzanese, 51, is the picture of cautious prosperity these days. Business is good, she says. As well it should be. The Preston Diner sits smack in the middle of Tinicum Township, just over the rise from the Route 420 interchange on Interstate 95. Down the road, the new Airport Business Center office complex is 60 percent leased.

Like just about everyone who pontificates for a living, I have been trying to figure out how Michael S. Dukakis has fallen so far so fast in his bid to be president. In just over a month he has blown a 17-point lead over Vice President Bush and is now, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 8 points behind. That kind of free fall might be understandable if the guy had committed a calamitous error, like picking an unseasoned draft dodger as his running mate. But the worst that can be said about Dukakis is that he has been overly cautious - like a basketball team that loses its rhythm by trying to sit on a big lead.

Lou Dobbs was a central and almost constant presence at CNN from its founding in 1980 until his departure in November 2009. By then, he had become more outspoken and his views more openly political - even confrontational. His closing statement on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight left many observers believing he might run for president. Dobbs returned to television last week with an hourlong weeknight program, also called Lou Dobbs Tonight , on Fox Business Network. He continues his nationally syndicated Lou Dobbs Show on radio (heard in Philadelphia on WNPV-AM 1440)

Less than two months before its former state director squares off against Newark Mayor Cory Booker in the U.S. Senate special election, members of Americans for Prosperity celebrated the opening Tuesday of the group's new field office in Cherry Hill. The conservative nonprofit now has five offices in New Jersey - including another new one in Washington Township - in an effort to expand its influence and voice across the state. "It'll allow us to go out and meet more individuals and carry our message of economic freedom to a larger community and widen our base," said Daryn Iwicki, the nonprofit's deputy state director.

"You are about to begin your journey into relaxation. It will be your own unique experience, just like you are taking a wonderful vacation. You will decide where you want to go and what you want to do. I will merely be your guide," crooned Noma Sigel as her passengers settled in for their trip. No seat belts required; goggles, headphones and a soft blue blanket were the only gear needed for this journey, the destination being the inner mind. All for $10 for a half-hour. Welcome to Brainwaves Inc., the mauve, lavender and blue home of the area's first public Synchro-Energizer, a $50,000, 32-person device that combines patterns of light with sound to stimulate the brain, reduce tension and stress, and improve mood and memory.

The year was 1984. Bob Rapp, a 42-year-old Democrat, was running in the Ninth District State Senate race against Republican incumbent Clarence D. Bell. At 70, Bell had already served seven terms. Rapp stressed in his campaign that the demands of the job were too great for a person of Bell's age. "Politics, unfortunately, has become a young man's sport," he told a reporter. Bell went on to win handily. Now, 10 years and two election victories later, he is still a state senator, and still busy proving Rapp and other critics wrong.

Why do we insist on listening to predictions that time and again turn out to be wrong? For example: How many pundits said Bob Dole would pick Jack Kemp as his running mate? I sure don't remember any. Bad political forecasts are a way of life in Washington. Political experts missed the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. Similarly, many economic forecasts turn out to be ridiculous. The main reason that experts are wrong so much is simply that the future is unknowable.

Philadelphia merchants, in the spirit of "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade," tried to turn snow into snow cones Monday and Tuesday, making up for revenue lost in the storm-that-wasn't. Ten years ago, that money would have been gone, buried in the blizzard. But these days, social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, e-mail blasts, listservs - has made it possible for merchants to pull off spur-of-the-moment marketing blitzes, offering discounts and deals to persuade customers to come out in the snow.

Less than two months before its former state director squares off against Newark Mayor Cory Booker in the U.S. Senate special election, members of Americans for Prosperity celebrated the opening Tuesday of the group's new field office in Cherry Hill. The conservative nonprofit now has five offices in New Jersey - including another new one in Washington Township - in an effort to expand its influence and voice across the state. "It'll allow us to go out and meet more individuals and carry our message of economic freedom to a larger community and widen our base," said Daryn Iwicki, the nonprofit's deputy state director.

This planned show of force by Major League Baseball is quickly devolving into farce. If Alex Rodriguez plays baseball Monday night in Chicago, within hours of being suspended for 50 or 150 or 214 games, commissioner Bud Selig's attempted display of strength will serve only to remind everyone how weak MLB has been throughout the steroid era. That is fitting, because Rodriguez apparently has been cheating in plain sight throughout his career, just...

IS THE DEPARTMENT of Licenses and Inspection's primary focus economic development or public safety? That question was one of several at the forefront yesterday during City Council's fourth hearing held to investigate the Center City building collapse that claimed six lives in June. Bennett Levin, one of two former L&I commissioners who testified before Council yesterday, said the department's focus has shifted away from public safety. "L&I has equivalent public safety responsibilities to the Police Department and/or the Fire Department, but we tolerate and even accept sloth and unaccountability in the name of political expediency and economic development," said Levin, who was the department's commissioner under Mayor Ed Rendell.

More jobs! More money! So say the people backing Gov. Corbett's plans to turn the Pennsylvania Lottery and the State Store system over to private operators. As I noted in this space in January, the lottery-sale plan - currently on hiatus - is designed so the promised jobs and revenue are added only if private managers persuade Pennsylvanians to bet more, through new games like keno (bingo, sort of) in new locations like bars and restaurants. As the pro-privatization Commonwealth Foundation said in a report last week, State Store opponents promise that: "ending the state-run monopoly will create thousands of additional jobs across the state and unleash millions of dollars in new business investment.

When the Philadelphia Electric Co. hired my father as an engineer in 1946, little did the freshly minted graduate of Tufts University and the Navy V-12 program realize that he had hit the jackpot. For the next 41 years, he and his wife would prosper from a rarity today: remarkable job stability, regular salary increases, and gold-standard benefits that enabled them - on a single "family wage" - to raise five children and send them to college. Moreover, his coveted compensation package was graced with a defined-benefit pension and health-care coverage at retirement for him and my mom, including survivor's benefits after he passed away.

Just a rocket's throw from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli desert town of Netivot has struggled for years with economic-development and safety concerns when missiles fall. Since 1997, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, under a program of U.S.-Israel community partnerships, has donated about $500,000 a year to the city of 30,000. A new link in that partnership - to be highlighted on Monday at a conference in Netivot - compounds traditional checkbook charity with innovative venture philanthropy.

When Shake Shack took over the space Dom's Shoe Repair Service had occupied since 1994, Dom's owner Leandro Montalto found a storefront down the street. The Roxborough native made very few modifications to the former dry cleaner's space. He ripped up wall-to-wall carpeting in favor of laminate hardwood flooring, and changed the color of the faux-wood wainscoting from blue to white. Why? "It's a little more appealing," Montalto says, shrugging. It's fair to say he put less thought into designing interactions with his customers than Shake Shack did. There, the order-taker asks your name before handing you a buzzer so when you go to pick up your food, the server can thank you personally.

Though it's not fashionable to look favorably on the 1950s, voters today might want to consider the choices people faced 60 years ago, the leader they elected, and the stability and prosperity that resulted. In 1952, Americans wanted change. The previous 12 years had been exhausting, marked by wars and recessions and scandals. As the Democrats were in charge, and had been for two decades, it seemed likely that the GOP would benefit from the hopes for new leadership. And with a nickname like "Mr. Republican," U.S. Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio had the edge.

He was the ultimate lawyer role model, a valiant fighter for human rights who battled against steep odds. The fondest hope of many young lawyers a generation ago was to be like the dashing Gregory Peck as he played Atticus Finch in the film To Kill a Mockingbird . Such was the case for Michael Fitts, dean of the University of Pennsylvania law school, who saw Finch as the embodiment of lawyerly ideals. To Fitts, Finch was a lawyer of incomparable decency, courage, and sure-handedness, as fine a lawyer prototype as you might want.